G.A. Logix LogicielsThere are two kinds of maps on a logging job.
There are the ones you make. Your crew builds them, you control the format, you decide how they move around.
And there are the ones you receive. The harvest plan the consulting forester sends with the contract. The landowner's map with the streams and the sensitive areas already drawn. The block layout from the mill. Those show up as a PDF, and you don't get a say.
You are not going to call the forester who just handed you work and explain how he ought to be producing his maps. He sends the map, you take it the way it comes.
Those are the maps this article is about.
Two different problems, two different answers
We have already written about the file that travels by email and ends up as four contradicting versions, and about getting out of that with a shared online layer. If the problem is your own data, that is still the better answer, and it is in that article.
But that answer assumes you control both ends of the chain. When the map comes from your client, you control neither. You get a PDF, full stop. The question is no longer "how do I move my data around," it is "what do I do with a document somebody else produced, in a format I did not pick."
What ForestLogix does with that PDF
You drop it into the job, and it becomes a basemap.
Not a document you open on the side. A basemap, underneath your GPS position, on real coordinates. ForestLogix reads the georeferencing carried in the file, tiles it internally, and draws it over the base layer. After that it is a layer like any other: turn it on, turn it off, zoom to it, take it out.
It is attached to the job, so it reaches every tablet on the crew. And it is stored on the device, so it draws with no signal.
One condition: the PDF has to be georeferenced. A plain PDF is a picture, it has no idea where it sits on the earth. A georeferenced PDF, often called a GeoPDF, also carries the coordinates that say what each corner of the page corresponds to.
Why a PDF works well for this
A georeferenced PDF is not the only way into a basemap in ForestLogix. You can also load tiles you have already prepared, or connect an online map service. Each route has its situation.
This one lands right when the map comes from outside, for two reasons.
First: everybody already knows how to make one. Exporting a georeferenced PDF is not a skill anyone has to pick up. It is a command that has been in ArcGIS and in QGIS forever, and every technician has used it a hundred times. Nobody has a new workflow to learn, nobody has a server to stand up, and above all, you have nothing to ask your client. He does what he already does.
Second: the symbology arrives intact. That is the real one. Moving symbology from one mapping program to another is one of the most expensive problems in the trade. Colors and patterns never come out quite the same on the other side, the legend stops matching, and the map you are looking at in the woods is no longer the one the forester drew. A PDF does not carry the raw data, it carries the rendering. So there is nothing to translate, nothing to reconfigure, nothing to lose. What you see in the cab is exactly what he saw on his screen.
And the trade-off is the same mechanism. If the fidelity is perfect, it is precisely because the PDF holds an image and not features. That is why you cannot click it to read attributes. You trade the ability to query the map for exact fidelity and zero setup. For a map you received, that you consult and do not edit, that is the right trade.
North and zoom-out
Two behaviors worth knowing, because they change what the operator sees.
North. Orientation is derived from the file's projected coordinates, not from how the producer wrote his axes. So the map arrives right side up, even when it comes from a tool set up somebody else's way.
Zoom-out. An operator wondering where he is pulls back to the regional view. The map stays drawn all the way out to the wide view, instead of vanishing right when he needs it.
What it does not do
It does not generate a map. You supply the PDF, ForestLogix displays it. Cartography still happens in a GIS, and for advanced prep you stay in SigLogix, QGIS or ArcGIS Pro.
And if the PDF you received is not georeferenced, it will not land in the right place. There is nothing in it that says where it is. Worth asking your forester next time: on his end, it is one more checkbox at export.
Where map apps fit in
Plenty of loggers open their PDFs in the woods with a dedicated app like Avenza. Those are good tools, and for somebody who only needs to look at a map, they do the job.
The question is not which one is the better viewer. It is where the map you received should live. If your operators are already recording tracks, filling out forms, punching their hours and getting work orders in ForestLogix, the map from the forester has no reason to be the one piece of the job that lives in a separate app, with its own account and its own logic.
It is one more layer in the tool your crew already opens every morning.
Try it with your own map
The best test is not a demo on our data. It is the last map your forester sent you, open on a tablet.
Ask for a demo and bring it along. We will drop it in front of you and you will see whether it lands in the right place, with the right colors.
Made for North America.